TiVo Crunches AT&T U-verse Set-Top Data

2/20/2012 12:01 AM Eastern

By: By Todd Spangler

TiVo has entered into a licensingagreement with AT&T AdWorks, the telco’s advertisingunit, to incorporate anonymous datafrom U-Verse TV subscribers into TiVo’s audiencemeasurement and research products.

TiVo currently pulls an anonymous samplesize of 350,000 households for its StopWatchproduct, which measures second-by-secondviewing trends for 72 national cable networksand program ratings for 40 smallernetworks. The sample is culled from TiVo’sDVR subscriber base of about 2 million subscriberson a non-opt-in basis.

A shortcoming of TiVo’s research productsis that — by definition — they have beenconfined to households with DVRs. With theAT&T deal, TiVo will be able to weave in datafrom non-DVR TV viewers as well.

TiVo will incorporate anonymous viewingdata from a subset of AT&T’s U-verse TVset-top boxes; the companies did not disclosehow many households would be in thesample. As of the end of 2011, the telco had3.8 million U-verse TV subscribers.

“At TiVo, we are looking forward to usingthis anonymous viewing data from AT&TAdWorks to help project a better samplingof U.S. television viewing habits,” TiVo generalmanager of content and media salesTara Maitra said.